sleight of hand, sleight of heart
by TolkienGirl
Summary: "You remind me of the treasure, Neal. A beautiful fantasy—just out of reach." (Alex/Neal, pre-series and up to 2x16. Angst.)


**A/N: Another angsty fic for my ill-fated OTP.**

 _"You remind me of the treasure, Neal. A beautiful fantasy—just out of reach."_

The edge of her grandfather's German accent softens over time, as his hair fades whiter and his hands grow frailer. Alex squints at the sun on the water. She has a rose in her hands.

Tomorrow, there will be a funeral Mass for the man the world knew as Michael Hunter. Alex doesn't spend much time in churches—she's a sinner—but she'll be there to watch them carry his casket out.

He didn't know she was a liar. He didn't know because she lied to him, too.

That's life. That's Alex's life, and she has stopped asking herself how much of it is her fault, in between the absent father and the harried working mother, the boys who whistled at her from the time she was eleven, the way her fingers can slip in and out of a pocket without anyone seeing.

She drops the rose to find its place among the waves that lap up against Coney Island, and pretends that the sinuous glimmers of sunlight are winking treasure in the ocean's depths.

Alex is good at pretending.

.

Neal has a silver tongue and a golden touch. Alex lies to him, he lies to her, but for a few glorious moments, they don't believe in any of it at all, the lies or the consequences. He tells her he loves her and she kisses him, because if she doesn't, she might be stupid and tell him she loves him, too.

It's true.

It's the only thing that's true.

Kate and Copenhagen. Con after con, and lines that she crossed only because she thought he'd cross them first. They lie to each other, and sometimes they believe the lies, and sometimes they just believe that they're lying.

Alex tries to forget Neal Caffrey, and she isn't very successful. Worse, she's plagued by the fear she's seen played out in a hundred movies, scrawled through a myriad poems. The fear that she will never meet someone better.

Fear becomes acceptance—she won't.

But Alex is good at pretending.

.

The music box haunted Gerhardt Wagner, Michael Hunter, and the only grandchild he left behind. The music box is a permanent fixture in Alex's life, even though it's always just out of reach.

There's irony there, if she wanted to look for it.

Mostly, she doesn't.

She gives the music box back to Neal, puts both crazy dreams in the same place.

Somewhere, the sun on Coney Island turns the water to gold.

.

Adler locks her in a warehouse. She's walked in and out of traps before; now she's the bait. She wonders if Neal will find her.

Neal always finds her. Then he lets her go.

It was always the opposite, for him, with Kate.

Alex rests her head against blank white walls, runs her tongue along the inside of her lower lip. She can still taste traces of the drug and a bit of blood—she scuffled when they first grabbed her.

Underneath it all, she tastes Neal, their first kiss, the lie she'll keep believing—or the belief she'll keep lying to herself about it. It's hard to know which. But that's the thing about pretending.

It only has to look good from the other side.

.

There's water all around them, and Alex thinks, _there's one for the history books_ —the treasure's tomb will now be hers.

Not quite. Neal has a plan, Neal _always_ has a plan—and they would laugh, five years ago, to think that the FBI would save the day.

They do laugh, now…the breathless, silent laughter that comes with making the leap between cliffs.

Neal is gazing into her eyes, and she thinks, _blue eyes, silver tongue, golden touch_ , and then she doesn't think anything at all because his lips are on hers and she wants to say _I love you_ , but Alex has told too many lies to let that become one.

They don't say anything. Because first there was Kate, and now there is Sara, and the water gleams golden but the treasure is gone.

.

 _A beautiful fantasy_ , she tells him. She's got that grown-up kind of smile, twisted and half-turned up at the corner of her mouth—the smile that says, _I'll be alright, we'll be alright, we cut each other out, it's what we do,_ and doesn't say _I love you_ because she's always been a liar.

Neal finds her, and he lets her go. Those honest eyes in a con-man's face break her heart, a little, just enough to give her the space of a beat, to wonder if he'd let her go if he knew she wanted to stay.

But Alex looks around her; pain becomes acceptance—

—and she does what she knows best.


End file.
